The Golden Apples
by Mercury Gray
Summary: On an unspecified and rainy night on the way to the Lonely Mountain, Balin entertains Bilbo and the rest of the company with tale about the Golden Apples of Erebor, an unlikely love story.


The Golden Apples: A Hobbit Fanfiction

* * *

With favoring winds, o'er sunlit seas,

We sailed for the Hesperides,

The land where golden apples grow;

But that, ah! that was long ago.

- Ultima Thule, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

* * *

It was not, on the whole, a good day for traveling. The clouds had descended early, and now a fine mist was falling, the heavy gray cast of the heavens promising that larger drops would soon be on their way. It was one bad traveling day among many, and yet the Company of Thorin was finding themselves remarkably dispirited – by the rain, by their wet-through clothes, even by the state of their dinner, once the rain let up a little and it had been cooked. Nothing seemed to please anyone. It seemed a day built particularly for grumbling, and complaining, and feeling sorry, and that was exactly what everyone did, and no one more heartily than Thorin, who seemed to be taking it very badly that his company was in such dire circumstances as these.

Everyone was sitting around the fire, which was going pitifully now that the rain had let up enough (the promised larger raindrops having, thankfully, never appeared) and the mood was somewhat gloomy. "Sometimes," Bilbo said, more to fill the silence than anything else, "When I was a tiny little hobbit, and it was raining, my grandmother would sit me by the fire and tell me stories, to take my mind away from things." As soon as he had said it he was sure that someone or another (Bofur came to mind) would make fun of him for suggesting such a childish pursuit. But Balin's eyes lit up, and a smile sprang to his face.

"A story, say you. A grand idea. When feet are weary, the mind is quick to fly, some say. Why not tell a story?" He paused, considering his many options, and then gave half a smile. "Have you heard the tale about the Golden Apples of Erebor?"

"No," Bilbo said. _But now that you have brought it up, I don't think you will let that pass, _he wanted to add.

"Oh, a good tale, Master Baggins, and one worth hearing. Especially on a night like this." Balin's eye glanced at Thorin, as if to see if he were listening on the other side of the fire, and then went back to the flames, collecting his thoughts for what he seemed to think was the beginnings of a grand tale.

"It begins, as stories usually do, with a King, and a summons. The king was – rather remarkably, for a dwarf - in the market for a wife, and he decided, as dwarves usually do in matters of marriage, that no better or worse than the finest craftswoman his land could produce would do for him. So he set a challenge. He asked that every woman in his realm make something for him, something that would show her art and skill the best. He would set the next year as a year of Contest, to give everyone time to prepare for a great feast, at the years' end, on Durin's Day, when he would see the results of everyone's work. The piece that he judged best would win the maker a place as his queen-"

"What if it was another dwarf's wife that won?" Bilbo asked, suddenly struck by this possible and, if possible, even more suddenly sorry that he had interrupted when he saw the mighty scowl that passed over Balin's face.

"Oh, hush, Mister Baggins, I'm coming to that!" Balin blustered and then, recovering his storyteller's air a little, continued. "The winner would be made his queen or, if she was already wed, the position of Chief Craftsmaster in the King's house, responsible for overseeing the work of all the artists and artisans the king employed – a queenship of sorts, you understand, and a very coveted position."

"Naturally, this created quite a stir in his kingdom, for though we dwarves are not a romantic sort, we are very competitive, and the idea of prizes and prize winning strikes us deep. All set to work with a will, trying at whichever art they excelled to make a piece that would win the king's eye. Some baked, and some brewed to create beers and breads of special magnificence, for our halls are fabled for our hospitality, and some worked in precious stones and metals to craft crowns and corselets of particular cunning and skill, and some shaped iron and steel into great blades and battle axes, for they knew the king loved a good battle better than anything in the world. Still others worked in cloth and thread, to sew tales of his great deeds into battle banners, and robes of state far surpassing anything that had been created before.

"The work they prepared was all done in great secret, for no woman wanted to be outshone by her friends or relatives. Amongst all the ladies there was great competition, but this story is concerned with only one of them – a young dwarfess called Idunn. Idunn did not come from a family of great birth, her father, Litur, being only one of the warriors who commanded a unit in the king's army, nor was she counted among the great craftswomen of her city. She was well known for her kind manner, willing smile – and a love of the world beyond the caves of her people."

"Sorry?" Bilbo said. "She loved it…outdoors?" He was expecting something fantastic and, well, different, and this was not quite what he had in mind when he imagined the heroines of his stories.

"Master Baggins, you must understand, we dwarves are of the earth, and we love the earth. We are happiest when we are underground in our halls of stone, and given enough rock to quarry and gems to mine, we would not emerge except, perhaps, for food on one or two rare occasions. Yet Idunn loved the growing things of the world outside, and she made a careful study of them all. But." Here Balin paused and smiled. If he had cared to look around the fire, Bilbo would have seen a few more dwarfish ears turned towards them, listening intently, but as it was, he was too busy trying to make a show of paying attention to the next part of Balin's thoughts.

"But," Balin went on, "There also was one thing that Idunn was well known for – and that was being clever. You see, Idunn was perhaps the only dwarfess in the city that liked the King, and wanted to marry him, and she knew that she would have to think of a particularly good gift in order to win the King's attention, for he would never see her and her gift otherwise. Unlike some of the dwarves of the great houses, she did not have a great store of jewels or mithril to work with, and that would not help her a great deal. So she thought, and pondered, and drew a great many of the flowers she had seen on her latest trip to the sides of the mountain, and finally devised a plan.

"Well, the year passed, and everyone wondered about whose gift would win the king's favor. Some said it would be the brewers, and some said the smiths, and other still thought it would be the sculptors, or the songsmiths. Some were merely content to see what the others had created, and others were hell-bent to be the one that won the prize. So, all the workmanship was assembled in the hall, and everyone in the king's domains who could come to see the judging did. For weeks it went on, the king surveying each piece with care, from the lightest scaled armor to the tallest, heaviest carven figures for the King's throne room. And he made sure that every woman in his realm was represented – for if dwarves are good at one thing besides mining, Mister Baggins, it is the accounting of what we have mined. He had been through every gift presented to him, and his clerks told him that one was missing – Idunn's gift.

He demanded that she be brought before him, and she came, with her smile and no apparent care about being summoned before the king.

"'Idunn Litur's-daughter, where is your gift to me?' The king asked, sounding very displeased as he said it. He was sitting on his best throne, with the great array of his celebration feast in front of him, and all these many marvelous gifts about him, and he was feeling more than a little imperious that day. 'Your father is my faithful housecarl, and oathbound to my family. Did you think I would forget you?'

"'No, my king,' Idunn said with her sweet smile, 'And I have not forgotten you. You have my gift before you.'

"The king looked at his table and laughed. 'These are the gifts of others, Idunn! The beer I have from Gerd Iari's Daughter, and the bread from Huld Halfa's Daughter, and the meat from the hunters of mine own hall. I see no other gifts here.'

"At this, Idunn smiled, and, moving closer to the table, took a bowl of apples from among the spread, and placed them on the king's plate. Handsome fruit, with a wonderful sheen and a glow about them as if they had just been picked that morning. The king looked at the bowl of apples and laughed.

'Apples, Idunn?' He asked, unbelieving. 'You bring me apples as your gift?'

"That seems like a perfectly fine gift to me," Bilbo mumbled, thinking of the last time he had eaten a flawlessly beautiful, sun-warmed apple and getting a little warm inside at the thought of such rich, sweet fruit.

"Perhaps to a hobbit it does, but dwarves are not overfond of growing things, as I have said," Balin said. "The king laughed at Idunn, and the hall laughed with him, but Idunn was not moved. And now, the king was beginning to get angry. Not only at the idea that he should be given such a paltry gift (never mind that he had gotten so many other nice things from the others) but that she should not be sorry about giving it.

"'Worthless woman! Take your gift back, if it can be called such, and begone from this place and this kingdom!' the King commanded. And so saying, he picked up one of the apples from the bowl to throw it at her, in the manner usually reserved for criminals and thieves. But before he could throw it, he realized that the fruit he held in his hand did not feel like real fruit.

'Golden apples,' Bilbo said, before Balin could get to his finale on his own. (You may have realized by now that while Bilbo loved stories, he was not particularly good at simply sitting and listening.) "She made apples from solid gold."

"Indeed," said Balin, feeling a little defeated that he hadn't gotten to reveal the story just as he liked to.  
"Solid golden apples, so lifelike in their mix of rosy gold and so painstakingly detailed, down to the last twig and worm-bite, that the King had not seen them as what they were when Idunn had set them down for the judging. He stared at the fruit in his hand for what seemed like a lifetime, and finally, he laughed, and set the fruit down.

"'It is a shrewd gift-giver who presents what cannot at first glance be seen,' he said finally. 'This truly is the best craftsmanship here – for I was convinced she had given nothing, when what she had given was right in front of my eyes. She shall be my queen, and the Chief Craftsmaster of my halls.'

"So she won him over in the end"? Bilbo asked. Balin nodded, with a rosy smile rimming his cheeks. "It seems a rotten way to end a story."

The smile quickly fell. "Rotten? The good ended happily!"

"But she married a selfish, vain man when she was good and beautiful and could have had so much better!" Bilbo complained. "It seems like something was shortened up along the way."

"Oh, she helped the king remember not to be vain and ambitious quite so often, and..." Balin floundered a little bit here, as if he had forgotten the story and were now making part of it up. "And he did come to love her, in time, and she made a especially beautiful queen. And you must remember, Bilbo, that she did want to win him."

"Yes, why was that?" Bilbo wondered aloud.

"Durin only knows," said Thorin darkly from the other side of the fire. Bilbo looked away from Balin, seeing, as he did so, that quite a few of the other dwarves had been paying close attention to the story Balin had been telling, though most of them sought quickly to look busy at some other business or another as their chief came into the picture. "He was exactly as Balin described, a vain and ambitious king, and she could have done much better. It seems our Burglar has the right of it. That's enough of stories for this fireside, Balin. We don't want you to be filling Mister Baggins's head with useless nonsense."

He drew away from the flames, brushing past Bilbo with an angry edge to his stride, and the rest of the company was remarkably quiet after that, everyone, including Bilbo, settling down for the night on whatever patch of somewhat dry ground they could find. The hobbit wrapped his cloak tighter around him and tried to think dry and warm thoughts, but it was no use. He couldn't sleep. He closed his eyes, trying still harder, and after a long while of fruitless forgery, felt someone brush past him, going in the direction that Thorin had gone.

After a moment, he heard voices, soft and secretive.

"You did not like my story, earlier." It was Balin again, the storyteller's brashness gone from his voice. "I sought to cheer you with it. She would not have you lose faith as you have, Thorin."

"Why did you have to speak of her? That story is not a happy one for me."

"It used to be,' Balin said gently. "It used to be your favorite story, and you would tell it to all comers."

"Yes – when she was there to hear it, and laugh with me!"

"Why not speak of her, Thorin? She was a good woman."

"She was the best of women," Thorin exclaimed passionately, "Best, and brightest, and most beautiful! And she deserved, far, far better than she got. And she did not marry a king, as she should have. As was promised to her. "

"But she might have. You will be King under the Mountain again."

"And for what? It does not pay to think on what might have been. Idunn is dead. I lost that battle long ago." A series of footsteps meant he must have resumed his walk – farther away from Balin, and whatever solace the older dwarf sought to offer.

"No," Balin said to himself softly. "I think you fight it still." He turned back to the fireside, and Bilbo tried not to turn over, or breath too loudly, or show anyone that he was not sleeping as he ought to have been. It had not been a story of long ago and far away, as Balin had said, but one of fairly recent origin. Idunn had not been a storyteller's dream - she had been flesh and blood once. It had not been a king who had made the contest, but Prince Thorin, the son of Thrain – and Idunn had won it.

_And he loved her,_ Bilbo realized in the pale glow of the moon through the clearing clouds. _And she died. And Thorin has never forgiven himself for it._

There were so many questions now he wanted to ask and knew that he shouldn't, about where she had died, and from what, and what had become of the beautiful apples made of gold. He shouldn't even have heard the whispered conversation between Thorin and Balin, and yet, he had. It was a little beyond Bilbo to understand the lure of gold and treasure and vast kingdoms under the earth, but he did think he understood, a little, of what it was like to do something for the love of another person. Certainly he had never fancied himself in love, unless it was with his books, but he had seen others in love, and heard it well spoken of, and when Balin had spoken of Idunn's smiles when the apples were revealed, Bilbo had thought that he could see her, smiling at the King who now, in his thoughts, looked like Thorin with his dark eyes and flashing temper, and it had warmed his heart as stories seldom did.

Perhaps that was why Thorin seldom smiled, and spoke of Erebor and the treasure that lay under the mountain with such pride and such tenacity. Perhaps she died leaving Erebor, and the apples were still there, in the mountains of treasure guarded so carefully by Smaug the Destroyer. Perhaps she had married another, while Thorin was on the long travels to find his kindred. Perhaps it was none of these things, and merely to him a simple question of revenge. It was a mountain of perhapses, and easily crumbled, but it sheltered Bilbo well enough, as good stories and their telling often do. He went to sleep soundly enough, dreaming of maidens with smiles like sunshine, toasting him as one toasts a returning hero with basket after bushel basket filled with apples that turned to diamonds and golden rings and kingly crowns in the light.

* * *

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me.

-A Birthday, Christina Rossetti

* * *

Readers, I have a confession to make. I, in my infinite weakness, have succumbed.

I, Mercury Gray, am one of a legion of Thorin Oakenshield fangirls. And I have written a fanfic for it.

Now, in my defense, I tried to make it as short and interesting as I possibly could, and as far away from the realm of traditional fangirling as feasible, and here's what we've got. I spent one spare afternoon writing it (running away from writing other, far more pressing things like the next scene of A Rose Among the Briars, and my Museum Studies homework) and did very minimal research or textual comparison. I apologize for these oversights.

The story itself is based on several fairy tales from several traditions, including the story from Norse Mythology of the goddess Idunn and her golden apples, which give eternal youth to the gods, the German fairy tale "As Dear as Salt", and another fairy tale whose name I can't remember right now about two bickering kingdoms who pit their goldsmiths against each other in a contest. One produces a golden flea, and the second kingdom, in their act of come-uppance, makes shoes for the golden flea's feet.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed my little bit of fun.


End file.
